Artspace and Phaidon are proud to debut two new limited editions by inimitable photographer and cultural pioneer Catherine Opie. Untitled #9 (2013/2021) and Pig Pen (1992/2021), each an exclusive run of only five signed and numbered pigment prints, accompany the first monograph to survey Opies 40-year career with comprehensive breadth.

Widely recognized as a leading artist of her generation, Opie has cultivated a body of work which spans both documentary and conceptual photography, represented by Pig Pen and Untitled #9, respectively. Each limited edition set comprises one signed and numbered print as well as the Phaidon monograph housed in a bespoke cloth-covered, screen-printed clamshell box and custom gloves for handling.

‘If I forced a very specific emotion into a photograph, then thats all you would ever see. And I think were more complicated than that. Im more interested in the internal reflection that Im transposing and externalizing by giving everybody permission to look and hopefully reflect the complexities of an internal space within ourselves as human beings.’ – Catherine Opie

Pig Pen (1993/2021) depicts Opies longtime friend and collaborator Pig Pen, a constant presence in the artists oeuvre who most recently starred as the protagonist in Opies 2017 film The Modernist. Pig Pen was originally shot as part of Opies famed Portraits series (199397), in which the artist photographed individuals and couples from queer leather communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco against brightly colored studio backdrops. Now among her most sought-after works, the Portraits were groundbreaking in the 90s for their dignified, elegant, and highly aestheticized depictions of those marginalized both by society at large as well as by the mainstream gay rights movement gaining traction at the time.

Untitled #9 (2013/2021) comes from Opies ongoing series Portraits and Landscapes, first exhibited at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, in 2013. The landscapes in the series, as in Untitled #9, present painterly images of iconic American landscapes shot with a racked focus, rendering historic sites ambiguous and semi-abstract. These sublime, atmospheric images become as much a portrait of psychological space as a physical one. In this image, Opie depicts the Falls, continuing and reinterpreting the tradition of romantic, majestic images of the American outback pioneered by Pictorialist photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.